Tag Archives: Proofreading

Suppose you have a write-up, you have written it for the submission on an urgent basis. Before submitting your writing, you have to make a decision to proofread it, as you don’t want to face a situation where errors in the entire task could be detected regarding your writing. It is very easy to proofread a document, whenever the soft copy of the document could be made available in a working computer system. The proofreader has to utilise the appropriate software in this regarding and check for the spelling, grammar, or sentence structure and along with this, he can comment on the erroneous sections as well. This is the final process that any writer has to perform prior to submission of his or her written content to the intended recipients.

It is necessary when you have to proofread your soft copy, to use the Track Changes option in the Microsoft Office Word, that can help you to make the necessary changes in your documents as well as this will help you to comment in the erroneous sections of the writings whenever they are necessary.

Track Changes in Microsoft Office Word application

Proofreading of any document involves the utilisation of some specific steps while applying the necessary software based tools for this purpose from the Microsoft Office Word repository of such tools. One has to open a fresh document in the Microsoft Office Word application. The first consideration is to operationalise the ‘Track changes ’ option, which comes under the Review tab. This application is necessary to enable the system on which the proofreading is to be performed to be accurate and to mark out the words that could be deemed as erroneous. Such errors include the irrelevant, misspelt words, syntactical errors and mistakes in a formulation of the sentences. All this could be highlighted through the utilisation of the “Track Changes” option. If you delete some text, it won’t disappear altogether; rather a visible strikethrough would appear over the entire section that had been selected to be deleted. Furthermore, if you add a text it will get underlined. These features allow a person to decisions regarding which of the changes he should keep and which sections would have to be discarded completely. Multiple colour combinations could be utilised to delineate multiple rectifications so that it could become easier for any reader to know which section has been rectified and also it makes it easier to understand who had made what type of changes.

Adding or deleting comments

Sometimes, instead of changing, the reviewer can make a comment and insert it as a part of the entire document. Comments will be visible as balloons in the right-hand margin of the document and the original author can be provided with the necessary guidance that whichever changes he or she should make to make the entire writing more improved and appropriate and devoid of any further shortcoming. Insertion of a comment in the balloon section requires one to click on the review tab and thereafter add the intended comment into the balloon shaped space which appears to the right-hand side completely. There is also a delete tab, which you can use to delete your comment completely also. You can also delete all comments by clicking on delete all comments tab.

Accept or Reject changes

For performing such an action, you first have to select the changes that you want to accept or reject. Then you can click on the Accept or Reject tab, and by performing this action, you can keep or discard all the changes that you have made so far in the document. In the upgraded version of the M.S. Word, you can simply accept or reject any change or alteration performed within the or you can change the entire format you have intended to select.

Instead of accepting or rejecting the changes in content at a single attempt, you can click on the review tab and click the accept drop down arrow. A drop -down menu will appear. From this drop-down menu, you can choose the Accept all changes in document option and every change that has been performed so far in the entire document would be changed and turned into a regular formatted writing completely where not strikethrough would be visible and the entire document, with its content would appear in a single coloured expression.

Revisions in balloons

To perform revisions, you have to perform the necessary stages of tasks by choosing to show such alterations in the highlighted balloons in the markup tab. To complete this you can click on the series mark up option and then you have to select the balloons and later on you have to show revisions on the balloons.

Some of the revisions will move to the right margin to make it helpful for the author to comprehend which ever improvements, corrections, alterations and changes and propositions of improvements have been made in the document so far.

Comparing two documents

Instead of using the track changes option, you can also perform the reviewing of any or more than one document by comparing two versions of the same document. Acceptance or rejection of the changes could also be performed by comparing the two files simultaneously. To compare two documents, one needs to click on the compare command by clicking on the Review tab. After clicking on the review tab, you have to choose from the drop-down menu from the dialogue box that would appear thereafter. Now you have to select your original documents by clicking on the browse button and by selection the revised document. Then click on the compare command and word will compare between the two documents and make a highlighted area where you could have made your changes. Just use the accept or reject command to finalize your desired changes. This would confirm the formatting validity of the entire document and would rob the document content of the imperfections that could have been left in the writing.

Safe use of the reviewing features

Before sending your document to the intended user or recipient such as to your teacher or to the university to which you have been studying, you can perform a finalized perusal and review of the entire documented content by performing the final proofreading. You can check whether you have missed to accept or reject any change or else you may look for any comment that you could have accidentally or unintentionally have left without having it deleted. By the help of document inspector, you can perform this task completely. These attempts of proofreading of your task, again and again, would be vital in terms of presenting the intended recipient with the perfectly formatted, grammatically corrected and syntactically accurate content in your writing. This would also impart the impression on others that you have been careful in preparation of the written content while performing your tasks.

These are a few guidelines for performing the task of proofreading of documents by the utilisation of Microsoft Office Word. Many other processes of proofreading and rectification of mistakes left in any form of writing could be accessed online as well. If I have missed any point, please do mention it in the comment section. Good luck!